Pouring champagne proved a dangerous business for Lindsey Vonn. While celebrating her downhill victory at the World Alpine Skiing Championships in Val d’Isere, France, the American star grabbed a broken champagne bottle and cut a tendon in her right thumb. She underwent surgery Tuesday.
Vonn’s problems began when she couldn’t open the champagne bottle because the cork broke. Someone extracted the remaining piece of cork, breaking the bottle in the process. Vonn didn’t realize what had happened and grabbed the damaged bottle as the champagne flowed.
However, Vonn wasn’t photographed smoking a bong, so she will be allowed to continue competition with a splint on her hand. After all, we must send the right message to the children: if you’re going to party, do it with hard liquid drugs.
Jeremy Lusk, an American freestyle motocross rider, died of head injuries after crashing while trying to land a backflip in competition at San Jose, Costa Rica. He was 24.
Every day kids are given little 50cc dirt bikes, helmets, and pads to compete in motocross. With parental permission, they are allowed to race, jump, and flip all they like, even though the potential for injury and death is always present. They become adults and do some incredible feats of acrobatics with motorcycles some sixty feet in the air at reasonable speed for the entertainment of the crowd and huge prizes. And then these adults become huge role models for the next generation of kids who want little 50cc dirt bikes.
But if Jeremy Lusk had been caught smoking a bong, people would cry out that he’s sending a message to the children that might lead them to dangers of pot smoking, which unlike motocross backflips, cannot kill you.
It’s amazing to me that we accept as normal the adrenaline addicts who get high jumping off hills on skis or motorcycles, jumping off bridges with bungee cords, and jumping out of airplanes with parachutes, we accept adults and even children choosing to risk that potentially lethal danger for their own personal enjoyment, but we go apoplectic if the same adult chooses to sit still and get high smoking a non-toxic plant. Physical risk that triggers natural body chemicals is good; Chemical risk that mimics the natural body endocannabinoid system is bad.
